Shark Exorcist: The Worst Ever

My husband and I like to live tweet bad horror with Michael G. Munz. On occasion we find a campy gem hiding behind low ratings. The three of us tried to watch Shark Exorcist this past weekend. Michael and I were done after fifteen minutes. Lance, my husband, doesn't give up on anything. Ever. The next day he watched the whole thing through just to see how bad it would get. From what I hear, it got pretty bad.

Camela: Thanks for guest blogging today, Lance! What was it about Shark Exorcist that made it so bad?

Lance: At the beginning of the movie, the acting was pretty terrible. This was followed up by the story itself having zero structure and random scenes that didn't really help or improve the theme.

To touch more on the acting, it was shocking how bad it was. Most of the shows we see were at least somewhat casted to find people who actually have some skill or promise in this area. In this case, it shows what would happen if you grabbed a bunch of people off the street or your friends and had them make a movie for fun. Also, it wasn't just one or two actor/actresses, it was all of them.

Camela: Tell me more about the story having "zero structure." Can you give an example of a random scene and why it didn't work?

Lance: Towards the end of the movie, a new character is shown going to a park, and being followed by a random creepy dude. She strips to a bikini and starts tanning, and then falls asleep. (As a side note on the low budget theme of the movie, it was cloudy the day they shot. This cracked me up). Anyway, the creepy dude then takes her phone and takes several close up pictures of her while she is sleeping, then spends several more minutes still standing there looking at the pictures he took.

She wakes up only to be stabbed by someone else, and random creepy dude has no other part in the film.

Camela: We talked about the terrible acting and the random scenes. You mentioned it was low budget. Can you give some examples of areas they might have improved despite the low budget?

Lance: They could have tried. I know it sounds mean, but they didn't do basic things they teach you if you're writing a paper in elementary school, or used basic common sense. What I mean by that is that they should have hired an editor to look through the story and notice scenes that didn't matter or were not needed. There is a reason that even the best authors have someone else look through their work.

Also, I mentioned the scene where they were someone was tanning when it wasn't sunny, but an even worse scene happened at the fair. They alternated back and forth between using shots they had filmed during the day and night, which made it very confusing to determine how much time had gone by. It was supposed to be just a few minutes, but if you went by how often they switched from day to night, it was several days.

Also, early in the movie, "Aly" was seriously injured from a bite with a shark. However, the special effects crew just threw a tiny amount of blood on her leg and called it good. It looked more like she had walked to close to a rose bush in shorts than was bitten by a shark.

Camela: It's funny to see you mention being mean. Everyone who knows us knows that you're WAY nicer than I am. On that note, I do feel a little bad sometimes when we live tweet and end up hating the movie. Sometimes actors, directors, and writers tweet back, and it makes me cringe a little.

How did you not give up? You consistently see things through that I just... At a certain point it seems like a waste of life. How do you do it?

Lance: Maybe that's why they kept throwing so many random scenes in, but I just wanted to see where the disaster was going to end up. Would they make a story that would go somewhere? It actually almost did. Would they find even more terrible actors? Would they bring back the actor of the guy who died back as someone else yet again? So many (well, three) questions were left unanswered!

Even after it ended, they had a scene that went way past the credits. I had to fast forward to see if they were going to throw in a twist. It should have been a twenty second scene, but it went for five to ten minutes. This part was so painful that it did require the fast forward feature to get through it.

Camela: I'm starting to wonder why we do this live tweeting thing... On to happier things. Do you have a favorite horror movie (counting highly rated movies we watched on purpose)? Have you found a horror movie you like doing this live tweet thing?

Lance: The Man Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon was excellent, and cracked me up the way it parodies the entire genre, but Tucker and Dale vs Evil ranks above that as my favorite.  It's almost more of a comedy.  While growing up, Nightmare on Elm Street was the best and scariest at the time.

I think my favorite movie to live tweet was Zombeavers. It was ridiculous, but fun.

Camela: Ugh. Zombeavers. Well, thanks for stopping by! Is there anything else you'd like to add?

​Lance: I think that covers it.  Thank you very much for having me as a guest on your excellent blog. :)

Camela: Aw. As my husband you kind of have to say that, but I'll take it!

Camela Thompson is a Seattle based author who loves coffee, monsters, and writing about vampires with bite. Check out her books in The Hunted series: All the Pretty Bones; Blood, Spirit & Bone; and Visions & Bones.

Lance Thompson shares a home with Camela and is very tolerant of her reclusive behavior. He even makes sure she eats when she's sucked into a plot line. Lance is an accomplished runner at several distances. His days are spent in the tech field as an analyst and Salesforce.com Administrator.